DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0125
LATE MINOAN III. AND DECADENCE 99
Knossos. The art which they represent would not of itself
suggest a violent catastrophe. Degeneration has setin.and
proceeds steadily and without a break ; but it is gradual,
and if we had not the facts of Minoan history before us,
we could never have guessed the moment at which
the first impetus was given to it. The pottery and
the painted chests, or larnakes, recall the designs that we
find on objects imported into Egypt in the fourteenth
century, at the end of the XVIIIth and the beginning
of the XlXth Dynasties. In one of the most character-
istic graves, an Egyptian scarab is found which, al-
though it does not unfortunately contain the Cartouche
of a king, is regarded as typical of the last years of the
XVIIIth Dynasty.1
Already, however, in this earliest phase, new types
cease to be invented ; technical skill lingers on and
dies hard, but inspiration has gone. Even the false-
necked vase, though it reaches its widest diffusion at
this epoch, is, as we have seen, a type found existing in
much earlier strata. In the later phases, unrepresented
at Zafer Papoura, technique itself begins gradually to
degenerate ; the designs of the last great creative epoch
are imitated with less and less fidelity. The naturalistic
flowers and birds and fishes which, as we have noticed,
it had borrowed from contemporary fresco scenes, are
now rendered in a slovenly shorthand method ; J beautiful
shells, as Mr. Evans puts it, have become corkscrews.
At the same time the parallel architectonic style fades
away into occasional groups of horizontal bands, the
brown-black glaze has all but lost its fine lustre, and the
ground of the clay has become a weak pale yellow.'
1 P.T. pp. 89, 126; Dawkins in D.S.A. ix. figs. 15, 16,
PP- 3i6-7-
2 J.U.S. xxiii. figs. 13, 14, pp. 197-8 ; B.S.A. vi. figs.
31, 32, p. 103 (from the Dictrcan Cave), ix. fig. 17, p. 318 (from
Palaikastro). There is a good example in the Ashmolean.
* Mackenzie in J.H.S. xxiii. p. 199.
Knossos. The art which they represent would not of itself
suggest a violent catastrophe. Degeneration has setin.and
proceeds steadily and without a break ; but it is gradual,
and if we had not the facts of Minoan history before us,
we could never have guessed the moment at which
the first impetus was given to it. The pottery and
the painted chests, or larnakes, recall the designs that we
find on objects imported into Egypt in the fourteenth
century, at the end of the XVIIIth and the beginning
of the XlXth Dynasties. In one of the most character-
istic graves, an Egyptian scarab is found which, al-
though it does not unfortunately contain the Cartouche
of a king, is regarded as typical of the last years of the
XVIIIth Dynasty.1
Already, however, in this earliest phase, new types
cease to be invented ; technical skill lingers on and
dies hard, but inspiration has gone. Even the false-
necked vase, though it reaches its widest diffusion at
this epoch, is, as we have seen, a type found existing in
much earlier strata. In the later phases, unrepresented
at Zafer Papoura, technique itself begins gradually to
degenerate ; the designs of the last great creative epoch
are imitated with less and less fidelity. The naturalistic
flowers and birds and fishes which, as we have noticed,
it had borrowed from contemporary fresco scenes, are
now rendered in a slovenly shorthand method ; J beautiful
shells, as Mr. Evans puts it, have become corkscrews.
At the same time the parallel architectonic style fades
away into occasional groups of horizontal bands, the
brown-black glaze has all but lost its fine lustre, and the
ground of the clay has become a weak pale yellow.'
1 P.T. pp. 89, 126; Dawkins in D.S.A. ix. figs. 15, 16,
PP- 3i6-7-
2 J.U.S. xxiii. figs. 13, 14, pp. 197-8 ; B.S.A. vi. figs.
31, 32, p. 103 (from the Dictrcan Cave), ix. fig. 17, p. 318 (from
Palaikastro). There is a good example in the Ashmolean.
* Mackenzie in J.H.S. xxiii. p. 199.